11 

1 



THE PROBLEM OF THINGS IN 
THEMSELVES 



§tasertatum bg 
DURANT DRAKE 



SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE 

DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE FACULTY OF 

PHILOSOPHY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. 



THE PROBLEM OF THINGS IN 
THEMSELVES 



DtHsrrtattan by 
DURANT DRAKE 



SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE 
DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE FACULTY OF 
<APHJLOSOPhV COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. 




BOSTON 
PRESS OF GEO. H. ELLIS CO 
1911 



5« 



In Exchange. 

DEC 30 1911 



ftlvJk U~S g**ft 



THE PROBLEM OF THINGS IN THEMSELVES 

Introductory 

By the 'problem of things in themselves' I mean simply the 
problem as to the existence and nature of things as they are for 
themselves, independently of a perceiver. It is a problem be- 
cause, in the first place, the very existence of things indepen- 
dently of a perceiver (or, outside of experience, human and super- 
human) has been denied by some, and seems to demand argu- 
ment; and in the second place, because those who believe in their 
existence have ascribed to them, as they exist outside of our ex- 
perience, all sorts of varying natures. The term 'things in them- 
selves' does not rightly connote an existence of a different sort 
from that which the data of our experience have, or from that 
which we naturally ascribe to unperceived things. That is a 
matter for argument, one way or the other. The table-as-it- 
exists-for-itself-when-no-one-sees-it may have, as we naively 
suppose it to have, the same qualities which it has as a datum of 
my experience — brownness, smoothness, etc. But even so, has it 
not other, unperceived qualities? Would an analysis of the 
perception-datum exhaust the analysis of the thing as it exists 
for itself? 

When we study the mechanism of perception new light is thrown 
on the matter. We discover that some, at least, of the qualities 
of our perception-data seem to be dependent on the nature of our 
organisms and to vary with them. How then can they be quali- 
ties of the things out there beyond our organisms? Do things 
have in themselves some but not all of the qualities they have in 
our experience? 

Here are two possibilities: namely, that things have in them- 
selves more qualities, or that they have fewer qualities, than 
can be found in our perceptions of them. A third possibility is 
that they have none of the qualities of our perceptions of them, 
but other, different qualities; and that their correspondence with 
our perceptions is a merely formal one — a certain definite quality 



of the thing corresponding to a certain definite quality of the 
perception, etc. 

But when one has gone so far a fourth possibility is likely to 
suggest itself — namely, that things have no existence at all in 
themselves, and that all that exists is just our evanescent per- 
ception-data, plus such other data as thoughts, wishes, and feel- 
ings — data which together make up what is commonly called a 
human consciousness; and then, other similar consciousnesses, and 
perhaps superhuman consciousnesses. 

The history of thought is full of such varying attitudes toward 
the existence and nature of things in themselves, and we can do 
no more than glance at a few of the better known views in prefac- 
ing our positive argument. 

The first recorded distinction between things as experienced 
and things in themselves was made by Democritus. The atoms 
which made up his universe had various sizes and shapes, but not 
color or smoothness or any of the so-called secondary qualities; 
these qualities being produced in us by the variations in size and 
shape. This doctrine reappeared in Epicurus and Lucretius. 
But meanwhile, by Protagoras and the Sceptics, the relativity 
of all perceptual qualities had been asserted, with a consequent 
complete skepticism as to things in themselves. 

Plato and Aristotle swung thought in other directions, and 
not until the time of Descartes and Hobbes was the distinction 
reasserted. Both of these thinkers stripped matter of the second- 
ary qualities. Hobbes actually anticipated the modern view of 
things by declaring: "All the qualities called sensible are, in the 
object that causeth them, but so many motions of the matter 
by which it presseth on our organs diversely." 

Locke kept to this distinction. But again reflection moved 
on to a complete skepticism as to things in themselves. Berkeley 
insisted that the primary qualities — extension, shape, motion — 
are just as truly qualities of our experience as the secondary quali- 
ties; and that we have no reason to believe in the existence of 
'things' at all beyond that experience. On the contrary, what 
exists beyond our fragmentary experience is — the mind of God, 
causing our experiences to appear in their definite and well-known 
order in our minds. Hume was as skeptical of a Divine Mind 
in the place of Things as he was of the Things themselves. He 



agreed with Berkeley that our knowledge is limited to our ex- 
perience; as to whether things exist beyond our experience we 
cannot know. This was likewise the attitude of Mill, who showed 
that all our physical knowledge can be interpreted as a knowledge 
of possible sensations, and their order; we have no way of getting 
beyond that sort of knowledge to a knowledge of things in them- 
selves, if there be any such things. 

Meanwhile Spinoza, impressed by the empirical concomitance 
of conscious-events with brain-events, a relation mysterious and 
unexplained, sought to solve this particular mystery by attribut- 
ing it to all reality. The universal ' substance' has throughout 
an infinite number of 'attributes,' of which extension and thought 
are two. What exists outside of our experience has thus the ma- 
terial qualities, but also mental qualities. They are but two ways 
in which we apprehend the One Substance. 

Leibniz, on the contrary, held that the material properties 
of things exist only as our 'confused perception' of them; in 
themselves they have not even extension. What exists in them is 
a dim swooning life akin to our mental life only lower in the scale. 
He may be called the first panpsj^chist. 

Kant held that all the qualities and forms of our experience, 
even space and time, are the result of our own natures; and that 
we only know of things outside of experience that they exist. 
They are causes which cooperate with our natures to produce 
experience, and are therefore presumably very different from 
experience; they are a mysterious and unknowable sort of reality. 
They are noumena, as contrasted with phenomena. The influence 
of this point of view is discernible in many quarters since Kant's 
time. These mysterious things-in-themselves form, for instance, 
the capstone of Spencer's philosophy, being there capitalized into 
the Unknowable. 

They were, however, only a sort of extraneous appendage to 
the Kantian philosophy (which was essentially an analysis of ex- 
perience), and were thrown overboard posthaste by his succes- 
sors. The German transcendental philosophy and its successors in 
England and America hold that all reality is the experience of the 
Absolute Ego; there are no 'things' at all, except as data in this 
Absolute experience. 

Herb art marks the reaction against this transcendentalism. 



The world of appearances is self- contradictory. But appear- 
ances imply realities of which they are appearances; and in this 
world of Realen the contradictions do not exist. Things are 
composed of numbers of these Realen, which are simple, inex- 
tended, immutable beings. 

Schopenhauer also held out for Kant's Binge an sich. The belief 
in their existence seemed to him irresistible; and tho we cannot 
have direct insight into the sort of existence they have for them- 
selves, we do know that the world is their image or representa- 
tion. Now in our own inner life we have given the existence-for- 
itself of which our body is the outward image; and we can infer 
that the reality behind the world-image is analogous with what is 
fundamental in this inner life of ours. But the essence of our 
inner life is will; this then is the essence of all reality as it is in 
itself. 

Fechner harks back rather to Spinoza, and speaks as if ma- 
terial and mental qualities coexisted throughout the universe — 
which however is not One Substance, but a hierarchy of existences. 
Animals and plants have psychic life. So has the earth. So has 
the solar system, and finally the universe as a whole. The ma- 
terial and the mental everywhere coexist; they are two aspects of 
one reality, like the convex and concave aspects of one and the 
same curve. A number of other writers follow Fechner more or 
less, among them Paulsen (who shows strongly the influence of 
Schopenhauer and proceeds through panparallelism to panpsy- 
chism), and Haeckel, who calls his doctrine monism. 

To go back to Britain: Clifford, influenced by Spinoza, carried 
the psycho-physical concomitance on down by analogy, through 
the animal and vegetable kingdoms, to the inorganic realm. 
Then, being a student of Hume and Mill, and realizing fully that 
the material qualities which we attribute to things are but quali- 
ties of our perceptions of them, he reached a panps3*chic position 
somewhat similar to that of Leibniz or Schopenhauer. The 
reality of the brain-consciousness concomitance is consciousness; 
the 'brain' being but a name for the possible perceptions of this 
reality in another consciousness. Similarly, all the material 
qualities we attribute to other things are but our possible percep- 
tions of them; in themselves they are mind-dust — a sort of reality 
which attains higher and higher forms as we ascend the organic 
scale and in man becomes consciousness. 



This theory has been worked out from Clifford's hints in two 
brilliant American books, written independently of each other: 
Dr. Prince's Nature of Mind and Human Automatism and Pro- 
fessor Strong's Why the Mind Has a Body. The latter, the more 
careful and elaborate, proceeds by establishing a presumption in 
favor of parallelism as the most plausible psycho-physical theory, 
and then argues for the truth of the position of the British ideal- 
ists, that all the 'material' qualities we know are qualities of our 
experience. The world of our experience is, however, a fragmen- 
tary world; there is no explanation of the order of its elements 
without the belief in a world of things-in-themselves ' behind' it, 
a continuous world that causes these sensations in us when our 
sense-organs permit. These things-in-themselves are homogene- 
ous with our consciousness, and of a sub-mental nature. 

In a number of modern writers a similar theory is sketched or 
postulated. But it is usually difficult to ascertain whether the 
doctrine is that of the concomitance of physical and psychical 
qualities in things, or is a pure panpsychism, ascribing only mental 
qualities to things themselves and putting the material qualities 
into the perceptions of things — where they become mental quali- 
ties also. Among these modern writers are Romanes (who would 
lump the reality behind things into a world-soul), Stout, Lloyd 
Morgan, and Marshall. Very recently Professor Heymans of 
Groningen has argued ably for panpsychism (which he calls 
psychische Monismus), in a manner somewhat similar to Profes- 
sor Strong's, reaching however the belief of Romanes and Fechner 
and Paulsen in a world-soul. 

Now panpsychism seems to me to express the truth of the 
matter essentially; and many of the arguments for it, particularly 
the careful reasoning of Professor Strong, seem to me sound. But 
the name l panpsychism,' the terminology used by the panpsy- 
chists, and their general course of argument, seem to me un- 
fortunate, and responsible for the comparatively slight attention 
that has been won for the theory. 'Panpsychism' seems to take 
the substance out of things and leave them a 'merely mental' 
existence ; all the language used seems to imply a dualism of mind 
and matter, and then to deny the reality of matter. Further, 
the theory is reached by establishing subjective idealism as against 
realism, and then by supplementing this idealism, filling out the 



gaps in its world, with psychic existences. It is a sort of plural- 
istic idealism. But today the philosophic world has pretty 
largely moved away from idealism to realism, and thus dissents 
at the outset. We have a strong neo-realistic school which holds 
that things have in themselves the very material qualities they 
have in our perception; they deny the idealistic point of view in 
toto, and need to be reckoned with in another way. 

It seems to me that the essential truth of panpsychism is not 
dependent at all upon a conversion to the idealistic point of view; 
that a better way to ascertain the nature of things in themselves 
would be to confess the inadequacy of subjective idealism at the 
outset and accept at its face value the world that science gives us 
— that is, as a world existing independently of consciousness ; and 
then on a realistic basis, and in realistic language, to indicate the 
evidence that leads to this particular theory of the nature of the 
things that make up the universe. Such an attempt is hinted at 
in the opening paragraph of Professor Strong's later essay called 
Substitutionalism. There he abandons his idealistic language and 
speaks of 'physical things' not as 'permanent possibilities of sen- 
sation,' but as the actual independently existing constituents of 
the world-order. He asks the reader to make "a certain assump- 
tion," namely, "that our perceptive experiences are not ... in 
the part or place of the order which they reveal, but in a place 
represented by that of the brain-events with which they are (as 
we say) correlated. The experiences, in other words, are the brain- 
events, considered in themselves; and all other physical events, 
in themselves, are what may be called infra-experiences — some- 
thing of like nature with human experiences, only far less highly 
organized." This hypothesis "puts the experiences in the same 
world with the object, only in a different place — in the brain, in- 
stead of in the object perceived." 

Professor Strong has not as yet, however, developed an exposi- 
tion of his theory in this realistic language, nor with particular 
reference to the point here stated, of the place of perceptional data 
in the world-order. This point seems to me the crux of the whole 
matter; and the purpose of this dissertation is to outline the chain 
of argument by which, studying the facts of the process of per- 
ception in a purely realistic manner, i.e., by the concepts of com- 
mon-sense and ordinary scientific usage, we may be led to that 



conception of the nature of things in themselves which Clifford 
sketched; and then to make some further suggestions as to their 
nature suggested by the work of Prince and Strong and Heymans, 
but not definitely formulated by them. 

We shall refrain throughout from resting on the authority of 
historic metaphysical systems, and seek to avoid begging any 
question by leaning on the connotations of commonly accepted 
terminology. We shall thus escape the snare of misrepresenting, 
and drawing unfair prestige, from philosophers who would per- 
haps not really sympathize with the use made of their language, 
and the equally grave danger of trusting to the conceptions that 
lie implicit in so many common words. The language used will 
thus at times be awkward and unidiomatic; but it will, it is hoped, 
be exact er and less ambiguous. Similarly, we shall refrain from 
criticising other theories. It is impossible in the space which 
we could devote to it to do justice to them or to answer the re- 
buttals w T hich their adherents would make to our objections. The 
attempt will be made instead to examine experience afresh and 
without preconceptions; to point out the need of theories, as 
principles of explanation, which can never be verified, as scientific 
theories are verified, because we necessarily lack the means of veri- 
fication; and to show that among these necessary metaphysical 
or extrascientific theories are that which postulates an existence 
of things in themselves and that which reveals their nature as 
homogeneous with consciousness but without its complexity and 
organic unity. 

References 

For Protagoras Thecetetns of Plato; Diogenes Laertius, Bk. IX. 

For Democritus Arist. Met. I. 4. De Anima, I. 2. 

Hobbes .... Leviathan, Pt. I., Ch. I. De Corpore. 

Locke .... Essay concerning Human Understanding, Bk. 

IV. 
Berkeley . . . Treatise on the Principles of Human Knowledge. 
Hume .... An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. 
J. S. Mill . . . Examination of Sir Wm. Hamilton, Ch. XI. 

Logic, Bk. I., Ch. V. § 5. 
Descartes. . . Principia Philosophise. Le Monde ou Traite 

de la Lumiere. 



8 



Spinoza 
Leibniz 



Kant 
Beck 



Herb.art . . . 
Schopenhauer . 
Spencer . . . 
W. K. Clifford, 

G. J. Romanes, 
G. T. Fechner . 

F. Paulsen . . 
M. Prince . . 

G. F. Stout . . 
Lloyd Morgan, 
H. R. Marshall, 
C. A. Strong. . 



G. Heymans. 



Ethics. 

Monadology. New Essays concerning the Human 

Understanding. 

Critique of Pure Reason. 

Einzig moglicher Standpunkt aus welchem die 

kritische Philosophic beurtheilt werden muss. 

(Riga, 1796) 

General Metaphysics. 

World as Will and Idea. 

First Principles. 

Lectures and Essays, vol. 2; Body and Mind; 

On the Nature of Things in Themselves. 

Mind and Motion; Monism. 

Die Seelenleben. 

Introduction to Philosophy. 

The Nature of Mind and Human Automatism. 

Manual of Psychology, ch. on Body and Mind. 

Animal Life and Intelligence, Ch. XII. 

Instinct and Reason, pp. 19-67. 

Why the Mind Has a Body; Journal of Phil., 

Psy., and Set. Methods: I. 233, 519, 543. Phil. 

Rev. XIII, 337. Essays Philosophical and 

Psychological in Honor of Wm. James, article 

Substitutionalism. 

Einleitung in die Metaphysik. Zeitsch. fur Psy. 

XVII, 62-105, XXXIII, 216-222. 



I. Experience and the Universe 

Before we ask what sort of existence things have in them- 
selves we must ask whether they have any existence in them- 
selves. The history of thought which we have traced shows 
that it is very possible for acute thinkers to hold that the world 
of things exists in no other sense than as a 'construct' in our 
minds, as a vision of the experiences that would accrue under 
all possible conditions. What actually exists is — just the data 
of experience and nothing more. Absent objects are but poten- 
tial experiences of ours; they are nothing for themselves. The 
prevalence of such opinions should teach us that we cannot begin 
reflection by assuming the existence of the universe in the 
common sense manner. At whatever conclusions we may arrive, 
we must start with what we find actually given, actually present, 
and justify our further beliefs. 

What then do I find given? What are the data from which I 
can unquestionably start? What I find given now is — well, 
whatever happens to exist now within the horizon of my expe- 
rience. It is difficult to find words that shall not imply more 
than I wish to denote. 'Horizon' seems to imply something 
beyond the horizon. 'My' experience seems to imply some one 
else's experience. But perhaps there is nothing beyond this 
'horizon,' beyond what I call 'my' experience. Undoubtedly 
I believe in the existence of something beyond, but that belief 
is a fact within my experience, and the facts believed in, which 
it points to, may not exist. That is, the belief, tho a fact, may 
be an illusion; its existence here and now may be all there is 
to it. On the other hand, there may be facts beyond this 
'horizon,' facts not given among these data, but given among 
other data elsewhere. Not only may my belief in the king of 
England be a fact given, one of my primary data, but the king 
of England himself, a quite different reality, may actually exist 
tho not given among these data. Other existences there may 
be, simultaneous with these data I am starting from, but they 
are not present with these data, as these data are present with 
one another. I may doubt the existence of all other data, I 
cannot doubt these. I may believe in other existences, I may 



10 

have good grounds for such a belief; but all I know to exist, in 
the strictest sense, is — just these data now present. This much 
of existence I know at first hand, now. 

It is important to realize sharply the fact that here are a cer- 
tain number of data — or perhaps some would prefer to say one 
datum which can be analyzed into many elements — actually 
present. Either this is all there is to reality, or else other reali- 
ties exist but do not exist in the relation of being present with 
these data as they are present with one another. If the universe 
we all practically believe in does exist, then I can say that all 
that I have given (or, all that is given here) is a very small por- 
tion of the universe, a small field. What lies within that field 
I know directly to exist; what lies beyond it I can only infer 
to exist. All inference must start ultimately from the immediate. 
And what I have given after I make the inference is not those 
inferred outer realities, it is beliefs in them, conceptions of them 
— as far as A is from Z from the same facts as those which make 
up the rich teeming universe they are conceptions of. Unless 
then I am what is technically called a solipsist, my experience 
does not coincide with the universe I believe in. If I should 
analyze my experience (i.e. these data present) ever so thoroughly, 
I should not find there the existence of the king of England. 
At most moments indeed I should find there not even a belief 
or conception or imagination of his existence, no reference to 
him at all. Yet I do believe, when I think about the matter, 
that he exists, beyond this field of experience ; exists not only when 
I am thinking of him and believing in his existence, but all the 
time; existed before I ever thought of him, and will exist perhaps 
when nothing that can be called my experience any longer exists. 
But now, what right have I to believe in the existence of 
anything beyond 'my' experience — these actually present data? 
I have this right, that the belief in a universe beyond ( my' 
experience is the only belief which adequately explains the 
facts of 'my' experience. There is certainly no scientific proof 
that a universe exists, that anything more than these present 
data exist. If a man refuses to believe in anything beyond the 
data he finds present, he cannot be dislodged from his position 
by anything but laughter. We can only show him that if he 
is to be consistent in his skepticism he must refuse to believe in 



11 

any thing beyond what he actually finds present. He never 
actually finds present anything beyond the now present data; 
the belief in his own past experience is as truly a transcendent 
belief as that in the existence of the other side of the earth. He 
has indeed these facts present which he calls memories. But 
they may conceivably be illusions; i.e. their existence does not 
necessarily imply the existence of the earlier facts they seem to 
refer to. In brief, the existence of one's own past experience, 
of other people's experiences, and of things outside of any one's 
experience, stand on the same footing. To believe in the first 
is just as truly to transcend the given, and to transcend the possi- 
bility of scientific verification, as to believe in the last; and he 
who denies the last has no more justification for his denial than 
he who should den}^ the first. 

For metaphysical theories are necessary if we are to explain 
anything. All three of these primary metaphysical beliefs have 
very much in the constitution of the very 'now' of a given 
experience to support them, and we can make all three leaps 
into the beyond with practically equal justification. The evi- 
dence is indeed in all three cases as overwhelming as in the nature 
of the case it well could be. If it is not absolutely coercive 
logically, we must not chafe at that inevitable limitation or 
hope to find any other beliefs which shall be more coercive. 
For no metaphysical theories can we find scientific, i.e. coercive, 
proof. All any theory of existence can do is to fit known facts; 
and we only claim for ours that it thus fits them, as no other 
does. Let us take up, then, each of the first three great steps 
in explanation of present data, and show what facts they are 
invoked to explain. 

In the first place, I believe in my own past experience; i.e., 
in data that were once given, present, as these data are now. I 
believe that my past experiences have been continuous with one 
another and have led up continuously to this present experience. 
I thus add to my conception of a ' field of experience' (which is a 
name for the data I find actually now present) that of a 'stream 
of experience' existing in time, of which this present 'field' is 
the terminal plane. I believe that this stream will flow on into 
what I call the future; so I may call the present field a cross- 
section of the stream. 



12 

Now the justification of this belief is not in the mere existence 
of facts which I call memories; for memories might deceive me. 
It is perfectly conceivable that the facts they seem to refer to 
never really existed. But there would then be no explanation 
of these memory facts, or for all our acts and thoughts which in 
the present seem to depend on and verify the truth to which 
memory points. I act, that is, not only as if my memory were 
a present fact, but as if the fact it refers to, the past fact, had 
been real in the past. I act on anticipation as if the future facts 
it refers to were going to be real facts in the future. I find I 
act wisely in so doing. Of course, it might be objected that the 
fact of the correlation of memories and acts, and the consequent 
verification of memory, consists in a set of facts most of which we 
can only anticipate or remember at a given moment. And since 
these memories and anticipations may be illusions, we have not 
got forward in our argument. So be it. But the point is that 
this now complex set of present facts, including these memories 
and anticipations, finds an adequate explanation in the postulate 
of a real past and future, and of experience as a stream extending 
from the past through the present into the future. If any one 
insists that explanation is an illegitimate category, that present 
facts just exist, and that is all there is to it, he cannot be refuted. 
As a matter of fact, however, every one does believe in the past 
and (barring the sudden end of everything) in the future; and 
if this belief is true, it does beautifully explain what every one 
finds in his present experience. 

In very similar case is the belief in other fields of experience 
contemporaneous with this present field. I believe not only 
in 'my' stream of experience, but in 'other people's' similar 
streams of experience. In ordinary language, I believe not only 
in my own existence, but in that of other people. It is true 
that naive thought is apt to mean something more by 'my exist- 
ence' than the existence of a present field of data, changing in 
time. But putting aside the question of the existence of 'souls' 
or 'egos' or 'subjects,' common thought means by 'my existence/ 
by the existence of 'my mind,' or 'consciousness,' at least the 
existence of this present field of data; and by 'other people's 
existence,' other 'minds' or 'consciousnesses,' it means at least 
the existence of other more or less similar fields of data, simul- 



13 

taneous with this field, but not present with it, not a part of the 
same field. There is nothing in this common usage to indicate 
that mind or consciousness is a substance or kind of existence 
different from some other substance or kind of existence. A 
consciousness is one of these small fields of data-present- 
together, of which each of us has, or is, a sample — as contrasted 
with the universe, which is very much greater in extent, and com- 
posed, apparently, of data not all present together. 

It must not be forgotten that all that I have given is one such 
field of data; the belief in other fields is an inference. It is an 
inference which we all make instinctively, as we infer our own 
past existence. But it cannot be logically proved, and its justi- 
fication to reason lies also in the fact that it is the only adequate 
explanation of the peculiarities of the given field of data. The 
accepted evidence for the existence of other fields is something 
as follows, when phrased in the cautious terminology we are using. 
I find within my field one constant factor, 'my body.' The 
very existence of my field seems somehow to be peculiarly 
dependent upon or related to this factor in it. Then I find 
intermittently within my field other similar data, 'other bodies.' 
Dependent upon these data or somehow related to them are 
supposed to be other whole fields of data, not present with mine. 
When certain data are present within my field the datum I call 
'my body' goes through certain changes; therefore when these 
'other bodies' go through similar changes, I am to infer the 
existence of similar data in other fields of data not present here. 

It is apparent that there is no conclusive argument here. It 
amounts to saying that because there is one permanent group of 
data within the present field, whenever I find other more or less 
similar groups of data within it, I can infer the existence outside 
of the present field of other whole fields of data. This is more 
of a leap than logic would warrant! It is very much more of 
a leap than the simpler belief in 'things,' in the existence of other 
data beyond this present field. Many present data are exactly 
similar to past data of this field, reappear in the same relative 
position among the other data, and fulfil the same functions; the 
inference that they are in some sense the same data, now in and 
now out of this field, is much simpler than the complicated and 
logically dubious inference we have been considering. As a 



14 

matter of history, the argument we have tried to state according 
to its strict logical worth for those who have no prior belief in 
data outside the present field, is always expressed even by those 
who profess no such prior belief in terms of such a belief. Our 
consciousness is intimately related to our bodies; therefore 
other bodies, so similar to ours in structure and actions, may be 
assumed to have related to them similar consciousnesses. The 
' consciousness ' in this argument is equivalent to our phrase, 
'the present field/ and therefore includes the 'my body' and 
'other body' elements in it. The only plausibility of the argu- 
ment, therefore, rests on the belief in other facts, a body-outside- 
of-this-field, outside of 'consciousness,' to which this field or con- 
sciousness is related, and other bodies outside of this field, to 
which other fields of data, or consciousnesses, are attached. 
In short, the bridge between the presence of one consciousness 
and the belief in other consciousnesses is the belief in things 
outside of consciousness. And it would be illogical in the ex- 
treme to hold the belief in other minds or consciousnesses' 
justified and not to hold the belief in things outside of these 
consciousnesses, data outside of these fields, justified. 

It is perfectly possible, as we said in the case of the belief in 
one's own past, to insist that the demand for explanation is 
illegitimate. But in that case one will never justify the belief 
in one's own past or in other minds any more than the belief 
in things outside of these minds. If one admits the legitimacy 
of holding a belief because it offers an explanation of the facts, one 
can justify all these beliefs. Either a belief only in what is 'here' 
and 'now' or — to be consistent — a belief in the existence outside of 
this 'here' and 'now' of the whole universe of common sense. 

What are the facts in the present field which the belief in a uni- 
verse explains? If that belief is true it explains the following 
facts, otherwise inexplicable. 

1) The fact that while 'ideas' and 'emotions' follow other data 
preexisting in the field' according to fairly well traceable laws (or 
habits), are largely modifiable at will, and depend upon the gen- 
eral nature of the field at the time, those other data which are 
called sometimes 'things' and sometimes 'sensations' act quite 
differently. They jump into the field, as it were, abrupt and un- 
related to anything else there preexisting. The strongest willing 



15 

cannot directly exorcise them; so long as certain other events do 
not happen, e.g. the shutting of our eyes (by which I mean only 
the appearance of a certain definite event within the field), they 
persist. We are, so to speak, at their mercy. These 'objective 
data' (as we may call them, in a purely denotative way) certainly 
seem to be subject to other laws than those of the interworkings 
of the data within my field. All this is quite explicable on a real- 
istic basis. If a world of things exists, it is easy to see that it may 
force itself into this field, so to speak. What exists here is the re- 
sult of what exists without, this field is what it is from moment to 
moment according to the events going on without. 

Indeed, this outer world seems at times to put an end to a field 
or consciousness — either temporarily, as when one is stunned, or 
permanently, as at death. If a bullet, e.g., is a phase of my field 
of data, how explain the fact that it can immediately extinguish 
the whole field, except by supposing that it is, or represents, a fact 
in an outer world? Even if it only causes pain, why should my 
field suddenly manifest this terrible phase, so unprepared for by 
its previous contents, unless it is affected from without? To see a 
man freezing to death, or writhing in the grip of a serpent, or from 
the effects of poison taken, would be to be sure that he was really 
in the grip of a reality outside of his own field or consciousness. 

2) The second set of facts which the belief in a universe explains 
is that of the physical order or pattern. Our fragmentary 'objec- 
tive data' do not piece together into a coherent whole. But by 
filling them out in imagination, i.e. with those other data called 
'ideas/ we can construct a complete objective world, so complete 
and definite that we can predict from our construction in the great- 
est detail what data will exist in our field at definite future times. 
There are no objective data in our field connecting these frag- 
ments; but we can take the fragments and plot their curve, as 
mathematicians say, and find an order into which each actual and 
every possible future datum will fit. This order is permanent and 
independent of the actual existence within our field of any of its 
fragments. Ideas and wishes are evanescent, never quite repeat- 
ing themselves, and forming no objective order. But these objec- 
tive data recur at their proper place in the order with the inevi- 
table regularity and accuracy of clock-work. They seem not to 
spring up spontaneously within our field, but to come to it out of 
this order. 



16 

3) A third set of facts is those which show that our objective 
data come in groups, a 'sight' being a sign to us of a possible 
' touch-datum/ etc. It is difficult to explain this except on the 
assumption that they are different qualities of, or effects of, the 
same 'things,' which have an existence independently of the ap- 
pearance of these data within the field. Similarly the apparent 
fact that all our fields of data (if I grant the existence of others be- 
sides my own) have their 'objective' data belonging to the same 
order. When I have certain data within my field, (as when I chop 
down a tree), certain similar data appear within your field, and fit 
into the same conceived world-order. No one person ever had more 
than an insignificant fraction of the data of this conceived order; 
but science, finding that all people's data, (i.e. the data existing in 
all these fields) belong to the same conceived order, pieces them 
together and makes up the picture of a single coherent universe. 

4) We need not dwell on such further significant facts as those 
of the physiology of perception — which are meaningless if there 
is no outer world. Of what meaning, e.g., are these data which I 
call 'eyes/ unless on the supposition that there are real eyes, exist- 
ing whether or not these eye-data are at the moment existing 
within the field, which are a real means of bringing news of an 
outer world? We need not dwell on the facts of cosmic history, 
which are without meaning if there was no universe before the time 
when human fields of data or consciousnesses existed. We need 
not dwell on the fact that if these human fields of data are all that 
exist, then chairs and houses pop into existence when we open our 
eyes and pop out of existence when we close them. It is con- 
ceivable indeed that we should properly call these chairs and 
houses 'groups of sensations,' and that these groups of sensations 
do pop in and out of existence. But the point is, there is no ex- 
planation then of that dependableness which they actually have, 
or of the changes which have apparently gone on in things during 
the interval while they are 'popped out' of existence. We need 
not dwell on the fact that, if we grant the existence of simultane- 
ous consciousnesses, which influence one another, there is a gap 
between the cause in the one consciousness and its effect in an- 
other. During a certain interval, according to science, aether- 
waves or some other physical facts exist. If we refuse to admit 
the real existence of physical facts not included within the fields, 



17 

or consciousnesses, then nothing exists during this time-gap, i.e. 
nothing of this causal chain. The chain between the two con- 
sciousnesses is broken. A cause exists in one consciousness, then 
nothing exists, then the effect exists in the other consciousness. 
Only the belief in the real existence of the physical universe 
bridges this gap. 

It is not enough to admit all these facts and then say that the 
universe exists, yes, but 'as a construct/ as 'permanent possibil- 
ities of sensation' (i.e. of facts within the fields). If the universe 
exists only as a construct, as a set of possibilities, then nothing at 
all exists save the consciousnesses or fields, which are far from 
making up the universe which is necessary to explain the facts we 
have recapitulated. If while being 'possibilities of sensation' 
they are likewise real present existences, well and good, our point 
is granted. There is no half-way position. Either the conscious- 
nesses alone exist, with their actual and potential data; or the 
universe exists in its entirety. In the first case the wiping out of 
consciousnesses would leave nothing behind; in the second case 
it would leave all the rest of the universe behind. Only the second 
belief explains the facts we have called attention to. And only 
this belief furnishes the bridge for assuming the existence of other 
consciousnesses from the one present. Our alternative is then 
sharp. Either a thoroughgoing refusal to try to explain the pres- 
ent data; or a thoroughgoing and consistent willingness to explain 
them, which results in the conviction that the whole universe of 
science exists, not only in the sense of possibilities of data within 
this field and others, but for itself, i.e., independently of this field 
or others, and whether or not they should be wiped out of exist- 
ence. 

II. Things vs. Perceptions 

We have now answered our first question and assured ourselves 
that things do have an existence in themselves. We began by 
accepting only the existence of the data now discoverably present, 
and saw that unless we were to reject the principle of explanation 
altogether, we are irresistibly led to the belief that the whole uni- 
verse of which science tells us really exists for itself, i.e., whether or 
no our individual consciousnesses, or fields of present data, were to 
be wiped out. Such a destruction might mean a wiping out of bits 



18 

of the universe; but only, if science and our ordinary observation 
can be trusted, of small bits. And it is not clear that the destruc- 
tion of these fields of data, as fields, would imply at all the destruc- 
tion of the data which make up those fields; these data now pres- 
ent-together in a field might cease to be present-together and yet 
all continue to exist, so that the universe would not lose a single 
item, but only a certain relation between certain items. 

We are as yet no farther along than common sense. We began 
below ground, as it were, building up our foundations, so as to be 
sure not to rest on illegitimate assumptions. Now we have 
reached the level of ordinary life; but with a securer sense of our 
right to be there. We may proceed to note a situation in our uni- 
verse which demands a further unverifiable, i.e. 'metaphysical,' 
theory for its explanation. That situation is, in a word, this : the 
data of perception are, discoverably, not numerically identical 
with the ' things ' of physical science. There seems to be no place 
in the world of science for them. Science studies the 'stimuli/ 
the causes, that is, of our data of perception; it traces the mechan- 
ism by which the causal influence is carried from the 'things/ the 
causes, to a human brain; it finds there certain brain-events that 
are effects of the 'things/ and have a certain degree of point by 
point correspondence with them — that is, there is a concomitant 
variation between the outer 'thing' and the brain-event, so that 
a change in the one produces (to a certain extent) a change in the 
other. It then traces an ensuing physical process out through 
the motor nerves to some physical action in the world. But no- 
where in this chain of events does it find the data of perception. 

These data are not the 'things/ for they exist at a later moment 
than, not simultaneously with, the things which they 'reveal/ of 
which they are perceptions. They are a different existence from 
the things, and not dependent upon the existence of the things at 
the moment of their existence. The things themselves are the 
stimuli of the perceptions, the causes of which the perception-data 
are effects; they are separated from those perception-data by a 
measurable interval of time. The star which sends aether-waves 
to me, and is made up of atoms in motion, is absolutely another 
existence from this set of qualities that make up my star-datum. 
There is no "idealism" in this. It is one of the facts of the 
make-up of our realistic universe. 



19 

Let us examine this situation. This star-datum exists now. 
But science tells me that the star of which it speaks is so far off 
that it takes thousands of years for the aether-waves to carry 
news of it to me. That star then may have been dissipated into 
wide-scattered vapor, or burned out, and so ceased to exist as a 
shining star, many years ago. In some cases some such thing 
no doubt actually happens, as in the case of 'new stars.' A star 
existed, trillions of miles away, thousands of years ago. It has 
utterly ceased to exist now. But this star-datum, this twinkling 
point, exists now. In a sense, no doubt, we may call both events 
"the same star." But they are not numerically the same facts. 
One fact existed thousands of years ago, the other exists now. 

This is a striking instance, because of the length of the time- 
gap. But of course exactly the same thing is true of all percep- 
tions. The 'thing' of science, the cause of the perception-fact, 
exists always earlier in time than the perception-fact. A man is 
driving a nail. I am a hundred feet away. A fact exists at the 
point where the hammer hits the nail. But at the time when my 
perception-fact exists (this sharp metallic sound), that fact at the 
nail-point has ceased to exist. The hammer is raised there, there 
is no agitation of air-waves. If you are standing two hundred 
feet away, then your datum of perception, again a sharp metal- 
lic sound, exists at a still later moment, when both the fact at the 
nail-point and my sound-datum have ceased to exist. 

This then, generalized, is the situation. A fact exists from 
which influences radiate. That is the 'thing' of science. At the 
instant when the causal influence is producing certain events in my 
brain (or very close to that instant) the qualities which make up my 
perception-fact exist. At or very close to the instant when another 
similar causal influence from the thing is producing similar events in 
your brain similar qualities exist as your perception-fact. So much 
is unquestioned by any one who examines the actual situation. 

But now, how is it that the data of perception seem not merely 
to 'reveal,' but to be, the things themselves which science stud- 
ies, seem to be 'out there' where the things are which send their 
influences to the brain? Do we not make the ' out-there-ness ' of 
perception-data an illusion? In answer, we must make a discrim- 
ination. The 'out-there-ness' quality of our data cannot be illu- 
sory in the sense of being unreal — for we cannot deny qualities 



20 

actually found in our data. But it can be illusory in the sense 
that it does not imply that the data really are in the real 'out- 
there' of which science speaks, where their causes exist. That 
this is a perfectly valid discrimination is proved by the facts of 
hallucination. The datum then present has all the quality of 
1 out-there-ness ' which any perception-datum ever has; but every 
one acknowledges that the datum does not exist in the real 'out- 
there/ It is perfectly possible then to believe that no percep- 
tion-data exist in the real ' out-there'; the difference between 
valid perceptions and hallucinations being not in their place of 
existence, but in the fact that the former are effects of and corre- 
spond to real existences in the real 'out-there/ and the latter do not. 
Common sense is justified then in saying that we perceive the 
things of which science speaks. We do perceive them. But 
what does that statement mean? The plain man does not ana- 
lyze it or perceive its apparent discrepancy with the facts of the 
physics and physiology of perception which we have noted. In 
the light of those facts it can mean only that we have perception- 
data which are effects of and representative of the things them- 
selves. I really see the star Vega. That is, a twinkling-point- 
of-light exists now, which is the effect and representative of that 
vast whirl of atoms which existed billions of miles away, and may 
have ceased to exist many years ago for all I know. I really 
hear the sound of your hammer. That is, a sharp metallic sound 
exists now, the effect and representative of an agitation of the air- 
waves which took place a few moments ago at the point where the 
hammer itself hit the nail, but no longer exists there. These are 
the facts. But there seems to be no need of revising our common 
sense language. All we need is to be ready to discriminate, when 
occasion arises, between the thing itself, in the real ' out-there/ 
the cause of my datum, and the datum (quality of 'out-there- 
ness ' and all) , which exists together with my other data at a later 
moment. Common sense has no need of making this discrimina- 
tion, and being a practical faculty, does not make it. We act 
upon our perception-data as if they were the actual qualities of 
the things in the real 'out-there/ and since they are to us those 
things, we are justified in so doing. The actual situation is much 
as if we went about with an ingeniously arranged camera obscura 
about our heads, so that we never saw the real world, but always 



21 

an excellent picture of it on the glass in front of our eyes. We 
should soon learn to steer ourselves about perfectly by means of 
that picture; and if we had always lived with that box about our 
heads that picture would be to us the real world. Of course we 
should have to suppose a similar arrangement for each of the other 
senses, removing us by a step from every outer thing, to make 
this picture world our real world. But that is actually the kind 
of arrangement we are born into. We have only pictures (if we 
don't take that word too literally) of things. We are many steps 
removed from them. The eye is an excellent camera obscura; 
and there are steps before and after the eye event between the 
things themselves and our perception-data. 

If then the datum of perception is another set of facts from the 
'thing' of science, existing at a moment removed from the moment 
of that fact by all the time required for the causal influence to 
travel from thing to brain, can it be identified with any other 
of the ' things' of which science tells us? That is, if it is not 
identical with the source of the radiating causal influence, the 
' thing' which it stands for to us — and it cannot be since that 
1 thing' may have utterly ceased to exist when it exists — can 
it be identified with any of the physical effects of that cause 
of which science tells us? No. Science does not tell us that the 
data of perception are identical with aether-waves or optical dis- 
turbances, or any part of the mechanism between the cause and 
its brain-effect. Nor does it tell us that they are identical with 
those brain-effects. Indeed it finds nothing in the brain but atoms 
in motion — finds there no twinkling points of light or sharp me- 
tallic sounds. So we are left in the lurch. This is where meta- 
physics gets her innings again! 

All that science can tell us is that the various data of perception 
exist actually or nearly contemporaneously with various brain- 
events. There is a definite synchronism between definite data 
of perception and definite brain-events. All the possible data of 
human perception are thus correlated with possible brain-events 
covering a certain area of the cortex. But where do they exist? 
Are we to be left with a mysterious synchronism and nothing else? 
Are these data of perception, the most assuredly real of all facts, 
to find no abiding place in the physical universe, to be left just 
curiously hovering above brain-events, in some fourth dimension 
perhaps, at any rate in no assignable place? 



22 

We might think we had escaped the difficulty by calling them 
'psychic' events, and saying that, being 'psychic/ they could of 
course have no place in the physical universe. But that is a ver- 
bal resource. Calling them by a new name doesn't solve the mys- 
tery. They certainly seem, besides, to be effects of admittedly 
physical causes. Whatever name we give them, the mystery 
remains — how are they, where are they, related to the physical 
world that science studies? They are not those causes, for they 
exist later, and those causes may have ceased to exist in the mean- 
time — not only the particular event that caused the datum, 
but everything that science calls the 'thing.' They are not any 
one of the physical facts up to the brain-events, for those physical 
facts have all ceased to exist when they exist. They are not to be 
found at any other place in the physical world; and the assump- 
tion that they exist at some other definite place in that world 
(neither the 'thing' nor the brain), as if by a triangulation of 
forces, leads to no explanation. The only relevant physical exist- 
ences at the moment of the existence of the data of perception are 
certain brain-events. It is to these that the data of perception 
are in some way tied. But how? 

It seems to me that there is but one explanation of this situation. 
We may refuse to try to explain it. But if we admit the right to 
beliefs that offer adequate explanation of the empirical situation 
when there is no plausible alternative — and we all do practically 
admit that right, as I showed in § I, in believing in our own past, 
in other people, and things — we may without hesitation adopt 
that belief which really explains the situation we have described. 
That belief is that those ' things ' in the world of science that we call 
brains would be found, if we knew enough about them, to be conscious- 
nesses, or 'fields of data.' What I call, in the language of physical 
science, i.e., very abstractly described, my brain-events, are in their 
fullness of reality the very events which take place in my 'field,' the 
events of my 'consciousness.' This paradoxical-sounding theory 
will show itself to be lacking in all paradox upon examination, 
and to be wholly consonant with all known facts. It gives us the 
only theory which fits all these facts; 'the only theory which puts 
what are commonly called physical and psychic facts into one uni- 
verse, and shows how they jibe, how they really form one continu- 
ous universe. 



23 



III. Consciousness as the Brain in Itself 

The first objection commonly raised against the theory that 
consciousness is what the brain is in itself, is that brain and con- 
sciousness are obviously utterly different things.* In reply 
we may say, first, that there is nothing in perception to make 
against the theory. The perception-data that we have when we 
perceive a brain are obviously different from the consciousness 
that is correlated with that brain. But that does not in the least 
indicate that that brain may not have in itself, for itself, the qual- 
ities of consciousness, and those qualities alone. We are not as- 
serting that the brain as perceived has those qualities; the brain 
as perceived has the qualities of our perceptions, in other words 
is a part of our perception-data. The brain itself does not get 
into our experience at all except in this reflected way; it exists out 
there, separated from the perceiver by the aether-wave-eye-opti- 
cal-nerve-mechanism ; what its nature is in itself perception can- 
not tell us. 

But, it is said, I perceive that my very data of perception exist 
out there, not in my brain; and since it is these very data which 
we are agreeing to call (together with the ' subjective' data) my 
consciousness, is it not clear that my consciousness is not my brain? 
But, again, the things exist 'out there,' certainly, and not in my 
brain. Yet the qualities that my perceptions of those things 
have exist 'here.' I really move about among and react upon 
things which are outside of me; but the visual and tactile quali- 
ties which they have for me exist in me. 'My consciousness' is 
a name for my perception-data (or for the relation that exists be- 
tween them, if any one prefers); but these perception-qualities 
are effects of the things, they reveal the things, they are not the 
things. The very out-there-ness of my visual data is a visual 
quality, produced by a well-known optical mechanism, which 

* It must be borne in mind that we are accepting that usage of the term 'consciousness' 
according to which it is equivalent to 'the given set of data.' We mean by it no substance or 
kind of stuff contrasted with matter; we mean by ' my ' consciousness simply ' these data present 
together,' and by 'your' consciousness 'those data present together.' Some of the data in 
each consciousness are what are commonly called 'subjective' data — ideas, wishes, dreams, etc., 
others are what we have called 'perception-data.' 



24 

stands to us for the real out-there-ness in which the things them- 
selves abide, but is a quality of my data, produced at this end of 
the causal chain. 

The trouble is, we think of our brains as a mass of gray matter, 
forgetting that that is but a perception of the brain, a set of data 
that would exist if some one could perceive my brain — but would 
exist at his end of the causal chain, as a part of his consciousness. 
Again, we think of our brains as small, whereas our consciousness 
seems to sweep over a wide territory and even to reach out and 
grasp the stars. We need to distinguish. Our consciousness does 
reveal such a world, and we live in it, we think of it, rather than 
of our consciousness itself, which exists in the small brain-tract. 
It is a difficult discrimination for one to make who has not ana- 
lyzed carefully the given situation. Let us therefore present the 
situation, as it certainly is, apart from all theory, in a diagram. 



GntuU V4.Z. 




Let (a) represent a star (in itself), (b) an aether-wave (in itself), 
(c) an optical disturbance (in itself), (d) a nerve-wave (in itself), 
(e) a brain-event (in itself). At (or at least approximately at) 
the instant when .(e) takes place, another event occurs which finds 
no place on this diagram, namely, the existence of a certain per- 
ception-datum, a twinkling point of light. Because it occurs 
simultaneously with (e), and is therefore generally spoken of by 
psychologists as 'correlated' with (e), let us call it (E). Now it 
is clear that the star and the brain are not in the same place, if we 
mean by 'the star' the fact (a). But if we mean by the star the 
fact (E), there is nothing whatever against the supposition; there 
is, instead, this in its favor, that (E) exists when (e) exists, not 
when (a), (b), (c), or (d) exists. 



25 

Now suppose another observer is watching my brain while I 
am alive — it is theoretically possible. He sees a lot of gray matter, 
but no star-datum, no (E), there. Yes, but the situation is ex- 
actly parallel, we must remember, to the sight of the star. The 
star is (a), the sight of the star, the star-datum, is E. So, the 
brain-event is (e), the brain-event-datum is — let us call it (P). 
It occurs not at the instant when (e) and (E) occur, but at a later 
instant, after (m), (n), and (o) have occurred, and when (p), the 
brain-event in the observer's brain, is occurring. 

In all this there is absolutely no theory. It is a plain descrip- 
tion of the empirical situation. It shows us that there is noth- 
ing in perception to militate against our theory, which consists, 
so far, just of one point, the identification of (e) and (E), of (p) 
and (P), etc. 

There is nothing in perception to militate against it. But does 
not physical science, which aims to be a knowledge of things 
as they are in themselves, militate against our identification- 
theory? No. We have explained that by identifying the two we 
mean that the physical description of the thing is true of it but is 
incomplete; that the thing in its fullness is what we find it to be 
at first hand. Science describes brain-events as complexes of 
motions of almost infinitesimal units. What these units are we 
never learn; they are the units that make up things, they are 
given a name, that is, all. They move in certain ways; their 
movements are correlated with one another and with the moving 
'waves' between them which we call aether-waves. So they are 
sometimes called ' centers of energy.' But 'energy,' in the physi- 
cal sense, is nothing ascertainable but motion, actual or potential, 
i.e., motion which is occurring, or will occur under given circum- 
stances. ^Ether-waves are motions of something in between the 
units that we call atoms or electrons; but when we ask, motions 
of what, science cannot tell us. Motion is change in space in time. 
Our whole scientific knowledge can be put — and it is the aim of 
science so to put it — in terms of space-time changes of the units 
of existence. Scientific formulae do often of course speak in terms 
of qualities, color, hardness, weight, etc. In so far as they do this 
they are still speaking of things in terms of our perceptions of 
them, they have not pushed their analysis to its goal. That goal 
is the reduction of all scientific knowledge to the terms we have in- 



26 

dicated. So far as science completes its work it becomes a de- 
scription of the space-time changes of undescribed units — a de- 
scription of relations, not of qualities. 

There is nothing then in our scientific knowledge of (e) to for- 
bid our believing that when fully known it is (E). All we actually 
know of (e) is that it is some space-time change of some of the 
units of existence at that point in the world; a change, presum- 
ably, that could be described, if we knew enough about it, in 
terms of natural law, i.e., by the same formulae that serve to 
describe already analyzed changes. There is nothing to show 
that the formula by which we should describe this event if we 
knew enough about it would not apply also to the event (E). 
Our perception-data are exceedingly complex and continually in 
change. Physical formulae are highly abstract and inadequate 
truths about things. They may be true of these perception- 
data; they may describe the structure and relative changes of the 
elements of these complex data. Physical science may give us the 
skeleton, of which the flesh and blood are the qualities of the data. 
It is the qualitative aspect that strikes our attention most when 
we have the data at first hand; they may nevertheless have a 
definite skeleton, and physical knowledge of brain-events may be 
a knowledge of that skeleton. 

It will be objected that brain-events are many and the total 
conscious event at the same time is one. If we use the language 
we have clung to, however, and instead of consciousness say 'set, 
or field, of data,' it will at once be seen that tho the field is one 
field, the data are many. The total brain-process too is in a very 
real sense a unity; the brain is an organic whole of interrelated 
and mutually influencing parts. It is its unity of diverse elements 
that makes it an effective instrument in the organism's success- 
ful life. So a given consciousness, or field of data, is a unity of 
diverse elements. All the simultaneous elements within the field 
exist together, in the peculiar relation of togetherness that con- 
stitutes the field; but these elements are manifold. In a sense, a 
consciousness at a given moment is one; in another sense it is 
exceedingly complex. The shades and variations in our field of 
present-data may quite reasonably be judged as numerous as the 
variations in the complex brain-process which, we say, is the 
physical name for it. Physical brain-process knowledge is, when 



27 

interpreted, a set of formulae describing in abstract terms these 
variations in a given field. If we clothe this pattern with the 
qualities which the data have, we shall have a complete descrip- 
tion of the events in the given field. But physical science can- 
not ascertain those qualities; it must be content with an abstract 
relational knowledge. 

If then our identification of consciousness with brain as it 
exists for itself is not controverted by the facts of perception or 
of science, what are the positive grounds for making it? 

The first ground is that it is the simplest assumption which 
does away with the mystery. Without some metaphysical theory 
we are left with our E's and P's dangling at the moments when 
our e's and p's exist, but with no place in the world-order; and 
their relation to the e's and p's, indeed, their existence at all, 
(since they are so different from anything we know of the pre- 
ceding physical events) remains a baffling mystery. We have, 
as the actual situation, the following facts, forming a causal chain: 

a b c d j e e' e" 1 f g 



( e e' e" 1 

\ EE'E" ( 



Here (e), (e'), (e") are three succeeding brain-events : an agitation 
in the optical tract, a current passing over to the arm-motor- 
tract, and an agitation there; (f) is a nerve-wave to the arm, 
and (g) a movement of the arm (say to pick up an opera glass 
wherewith to look at the star to better advantage). When (e) 
exists, (E), the star-datum, exists; when (e') exists, (E')> the 
forming of the desire to pick up the opera glass, exists; when (e") 
exists, (E"), the will to pick up the glass, exists. The physical 
chain could apparently take care of itself. What are (E, E', E") 
doing there? How are they related to (e, e', e")? Why, it is all 
explained if we make the simple assumption that the e's are the 
E's. We don't know of two sets of realities there. Learning of the 
facts which exist then in two different ways, we call them by 
different names; but that does not imply that they are different 
facts. 

Another mystery which the assumption explains is that of the 
relation of the ' subjective' data to bodily events and to the 
world. If perception-data are the realities described by science 
as certain brain-events, then we may likewise assume that ideas, 



28 

wishes, resolves, dreams, etc., are the realities underlying other 
brain-events, those, namely, which are 'centrally,' not 'periphe- 
rally' excited. The evidence is ample that none of these data 
exist without definite brain-events 'correlated' with them. If 
these data are those brain-events in themselves, then the whole 
field of data is the whole brain-process in itself, and the relation 
of 'mind' and 'body' is explained. 

Still another important set of facts which the assumption 
explains is that relating to the causal efficacy of conscious states 
and brain motions. Physiology tells us that the cause of (f) 
is (e"), w T hich is caused by (e 7 ), which is caused by (e), which is 
caused by (d). But direct experience seems to show that (d) 
causes (E), that (E'), that (#), and that (f). The will to pick 
up the opera glass at least supposes itself to be the cause of the 
arm movement. On ouritheory both causal chains are real and 
not illusory. For it is only one chain of events. With fuller 
knowledge the e's can all be written E's. 

Finally, there is one significant fact that points directly to 
our assumption. Brain-events, being definite effects of outer 
things, vary concomitantly with them, and are thus, in some 
degree, representative of them. But the data of perception are 
also representative of things, as is shown by the fact that they 
reveal those things to us, serve to steer us about among them. 
When they are not representative of them they are illusions. 
This difference between true perception and illusion, an empirical 
difference, points to the truth that true perceptions are really 
representative of outer reality. We have thus two representa- 
tions of outer reality produced simultaneously. This points 
to their identity; and their identity explains the desperate 
problem of epistemology. How can conscious facts represent 
reality? Through being effects of it, produced, as the brain- 
events are seen to be produced, through the mechanism of per- 
ception. 

I hold then that just as it is legitimate to believe in the exist- 
ence of the universe, because that assumption explains the 
peculiarities of the data within a given field, so it is legitimate 
to believe that consciousness is the brain-in-itself, because that 
assumption explains the peculiarities of the empirical situation. 



29 



IV. The Nature of Things in Themselves 

We now have a theory which explains the relation of brain 
and consciousness; and with that as a tool we may attack the 
problem of the nature which things have in themselves. What 
means have we for solving that problem? In the first place, we 
have our perception-data. But the qualities which compose them 
exist, so far as we know, only at the brain-point in the world- 
order, separated spatially by the whole mechanism of percep- 
tion and temporally by the interval the causal process requires 
to traverse that mechanism from the things perceived. We 
cannot assume without further evidence that things have in 
themselves similar qualities. Our perception-data have un- 
doubtedly some formal correspondence with things, else they 
would not serve to steer us about among them successfully; 
they are, as we say, representative of them. But this repre- 
sentative function is compatible with a totally different quali- 
tative nature. Hence there is nothing in perception to indicate 
the qualitative nature that things have in themselves. 

A further consideration shows that it is impossible that more 
than a very few of our perception-data should be copies of 
the qualities of things themselves. For those perception-data 
which are perceptions of one and the same thing vary indefinitely 
themselves. The copy-theory of perception is conclusively dis- 
proved by a comparison of the qualitative differences of dif- 
ferent people's perceptions of the same object. Suppose a hun- 
dred people are looking at a tree, i.e., in exacter language, 
are having visible perception-data representative of the tree. 
No two sets of perception-data are exactly alike. Those who 
are near the tree have a bright-green-tree-datum, those farther 
away have a bluish-green-tree-datum, those who are color-blind 
have a drab-tree-datum. Those who are near have a large-tree- 
datum, those who are far have a small-tree-datum. Since no 
two heads are in the same place, no two see the tree from the same 
angle of vision; it is impossible that the datum which any one 
has, and which is for him the tree, can be precisely like that which 
any one else has. The differences may be extreme, as when a 



30 

man is miles away, and his tree-datum is but a tiny blur. Now 
of all these qualitatively different data only one datum can be 
a copy of the tree as it is in itself. Which one? Is there any 
more reason for supposing that the tree in itself is green — since 
through a mechanism which includes an optical retina of a certain 
sort it produced an effect which has the quality ' green ' — than for 
supposing that the tree in itself is drab — since through a mechan- 
ism which includes an optical retina of another sort it produces 
an effect which has the quality 'drab'? We say the latter retina 
is abnormal and distorts the real nature of the tree. But in 
truth all that the word 'abnormal' can mean is 'unusual/ or else 
'unfitting us for dealing with the object.' The man who sees 
the tree drab, however, is as well fitted to deal with it as he who 
sees it green. The fact that fewer men have a drab-datum than 
have a green-datum proves nothing at all. And if we merely 
take one man's experience alone, the same tree in itself cannot 
be both bright green and bluish green. Which perception- 
datum is a 'copy' of the tree, the bright green or the bluish 
green datum? 

There is a phrase which seems to meet the situation. It is 
said, the tree has all these qualities at once. It is bright green 
in relation to & near-bj^ observer, bluish in relation to a far-off 
observer, drab in relation to a color-blind observer, etc. But 
what can this ingenious phrase mean on analysis? Either of 
two things. Either that the tree itself has all these contra- 
dictory qualities at the same time and place — which is a logical 
impossibility; or that it is of such a nature as to produce these 
different perception-data through the different media interven- 
ing, which is our contention. That the former possibility is not 
illogical is sometimes urged. It is pointed out that a man may 
be a father in relation to one man and a son in relation to 
another at the same time, a nephew to a third, etc. But these 
are but shorthand ways of referring to facts not existing as quali- 
ties in the man. We mean to say that the man was begotten, 
years ago, by this other man, is what he is today on account of 
that fact, among others. In his turn he has begotten a son. 
The facts are clearly denoted by the words 'father' and 'son'; 
there is no contradiction between the two sets of facts. And 
there is no contradiction in a tree's being green and drab at the 



31 

same time if we mean that it has produced and is of such a nature 
as to produce the green effect through one mechanism and the 
drab effect through another. Or we might mean that part of 
it is green and part of it is drab — the two qualities can easily 
coexist side by side. But this man's tree-datum is all green 
(leaving aside the gray trunk, etc.), that man's is all drab. 
Both cannot be accurate copies of the same original. You can 
picture a man, and label the picture A's father; you can picture 
the same man and call the picture B's son; you would have 
exactly similar pictures. Because 'father' and 'son' denote 
relations, not qualities. You cannot picture a drab tree and a 
green tree and have exactly similar pictures, because ' green ' and 
'drab' are not relations but qualities. 

What our various perception-data which reveal the same thing 
have in common is not a group of qualities which copy the quali- 
ties of the original, but a certain formal correspondence with 
one another, a similar place in that universal order into which 
all our perception-data fit, and a similar function in directing our 
action. It is exactly such a formal knowledge, such a knowl- 
edge of the place of a thing in the whole order of things, and of 
the function it will fulfil in the general interplay of things, that 
science gives us. Scientific knowledge is but an extension of 
perception-knowledge, the difference being that our perception- 
knowledge is clothed with a qualitative nature, which science, in 
its ultimate analyses, strips from them, presenting in succinct 
formulae that part of our perceptions and their possible exten- 
sions which is really knowledge of the things — the formal part. 

Of course, as we think of the universe, we clothe it in our mind's 
eye with the qualities which our perception-data have. It is a 
natural and instinctive case of the pathetic fallacy. And in 
spite of our philosophic insight we shall go on thinking of the 
world in terms of our perceptions of it. It is necessary that we 
should. What matters to us, except in our moments of intel- 
lectual curiosity, is not the inner nature of things, but our own 
potential experiences. Whenever we experience the world, it is 
bound to be through the medium of our sense-organs; and the 
world for us will always be, in our practical life, a world with 
such qualities as our perception-data have. None the less real, 
if hidden forever from our gaze, is the fullness of life w T hich things 



32 

have in themselves, on the other side of our perception-mechan- 
ism. 

Our scientific knowledge then cannot reveal to us the qualities 
which things have in themselves, any more than our perceptions 
can. Science is but a fitting together of our perceptions and a 
revealing of their pattern, the order which they follow, which 
must be the order of the world of things, because we are able 
by our knowledge of it to predict with precision future changes in 
things. We must not be confused by the thought that science 
reduces everything to atoms in motion. Atoms (or whatever 
we call the ultimate units of matter) we picture to ourselves as 
hard little grayish bits of matter. The qualitative nature of things 
composed of constellations of such atoms is obviously very differ- 
ent from the qualitative nature of our perceptions of those same 
things; yet there seems to be a fairly definite qualitative nature 
there. But we are completely mistaken in picturing atoms as 
hard grayish bits of matter. The prime-atoms (which seem to 
be what are called 'electrons' nowadays) are not known to have 
any qualities whatsoever. They have mass, but that is their 
quantitative aspect; they have inertia, velocity, they attract, 
repel, etc., but these are all descriptions of their motions and the 
motions which they invoke in one another. In the electrons we 
seem to have reached the units of matter, because they seem to 
be identical in mass with one another. They are simply 'units 
of matter/ 'centers of force,' 'points of reaction,' etc. We know 
nothing of their qualitative nature. 

Indeed, a study of the causes which produce all our percep- 
tion-qualities seems to show that those qualities cannot exist in 
the things. Take light, i.e., brightness, for example. Light 
is to the physicist a certain aether-vibration proceeding from 
certain changes of motion in certain electrons which are flying 
about in material bodies. These electrons which produce light- 
waves are but a very few among the myriad units which make up a 
material body. The light, or brightness, which is a quality of 
our perception-data is the effect of those aether-vibrations, 
through the eye on the brain. Are we to suppose that the aether- 
pulses have the quality of brightness too? That the electrons 
whose sharp turns produce these pulses have the quality of 
brightness? Even if we were to make that supposition, far the 



33 

greater part of the mass of the body is left without the quality of 
brightness. 

So it is with the other qualities we ascribe to things. Heat 
in the things themselves is, so far as science tells us, but a more or 
less rapid motion of molecules — not at all that quality which we 
mean by 'heat.' So with hardness. Things themselves are 
not hard solid bodies, they are great voids, like the open sky, 
with exquisitely tiny units, very far apart from one another, 
flying about in them, and tiny lines of aether-vibration radiating 
between. Physically, hardness is the fact that other bodies do 
not readily push into and distort these constellations of units. 
What we feel as hardness, this quality that we get in our experi- 
ence when we push against certain bodies, is a fact that exists, 
so far as we know, only when our muscular sense has sent a nerve- 
wave to the brain. No doubt this physical knowledge of 
motions is incomplete knowledge, but there is nothing in this 
knowledge to indicate that we can legitimately fill it out by read- 
ing back into the things the effects produced when the influences 
radiated from them strike us. 

We must not forget that we are removed by a number of steps 
from things. The nature of the thing itself is described 
abstractly by science in terms of the motions of tiny units; the 
aether-vibration is something quite different; the optical dis- 
turbance quite another sort of fact; the nerve-wave still different, 
and the brain-event different from that. How could a copy of 
the thing itself be produced through such a set of changes ! Just 
as a picture is produced on a photographic plate through a partly 
similar set of changes? Exactly. But a picture is not a copy 
of what it pictures. Is a picture of you a copy of you? It does 
not even copy the softness of your flesh, or clothes, the weight 
your body has, its heat, or many another quality which an 
observer can perceive your body to have. Still less does it 
copy your real inner nature. Much as a photograph pictures a 
body do our perception-data picture things. If you print your 
picture on solio paper you get one kind of representation; if 
you print it on sepia paper you get another kind; if you use a 
small camera you get one kind, if a large, another; if you use a 
red glass lens one kind, if a green glass, another, etc. Your 
pictures will have in common only their formal correspondence 
with the body pictured. So it is with our perceptions. 



34 

But there is another important set of considerations. Close 
study of our sense-organs and brain makes it apparent that the 
qualities of our perception-data depend upon their nature, while 
their form depends to some extent on sense-organ facts, on 
aether-wave facts, on nerve-wave and brain facts. For example, 
I shake my eyes, and have a moving-tree-datum. I am sure 
however that the tree itself does not move. How could the 
shaking of my eyes make a tree itself move far away from me? 
Again, a straight stick partly in water looks bent to me. The 
aether-waves have been bent by the water — but I know the stick 
itself is straight. I can verify that belief by feeling of the stick. 
Again, if the nerve between my eye and brain is broken I see 
nothing at all. But I believe that things themselves still exist. 
We have to disentangle the causes that reside in the thing from 
the causes that reside in the mechanism of perception. And we 
see that all the qualities of our data, everything except a certain 
aspect, which we can disentangle, of their order, or pattern, 
depends upon the particular nature of that mechanism. 

Thus if our sense-organs were different we should have quite 
different data. The world for us would be very different, and we 
should picture it in our mind's eye very differently from the way 
we do picture it. If our eyes were made to respond to the waves 
that affect our heat-sense, and our heat-nerve-organs were made 
to respond to light-waves, we should have visual data when we 
now have the quality of hotness, and feel hot when we now see. 
The entire visible world would be but a series of variations in 
temperature to us, and we should see the differences in the heat 
of different parts of our body as a picture! Or, if the nerves 
from the fingers were to be spliced to the optical nerves, we 
should have color- and light-sensations when we feel of things; 
with closed eyes we should literally see a world through our 
fingers. But it would be a very different world from that we 
actually see; for the stimuli to the tactile organs are different 
from the stimuli to the optical organs. We might learn to get 
along in our new world as conveniently as we get along in our 
actual picture-world, both worlds being only pictures, in different 
materials and with different pigments, of the actual universe. 
In such another picture-world from ours do the animals live, 
no doubt. Who can imagine what the world is like to dogs, for 



35 

whom scent is the great sense? Yet they are as well guided for 
their purposes by their perception-data as we by ours. How 
foolish then to suppose that the particular set of perception- 
organs which we men, in this particular stage of our physical 
evolution, possess, happens to produce a set of perception-data 
which copy the real qualities of things! 

That they do not copy the qualities of things is finally proved 
by a comparison of brain-events with the outer physical events 
which cause them; there is no doubt a concomitant variation 
between them, but there is no close similarity. In so far, and only 
in so far, as there is similarity between the two events, as physi- 
cally described, can we infer a similarity in their reality. 

We have in all this erected no dualism of matter and mind. 
My mind is just — these data which exist together. Other minds 
are other similar sets of data existing at other points — namely, 
where, in physical terms, other brains exist. Matter is just — all 
those other realities which exist in the spaces between the 'minds.' 
There is no reason why we should not suppose all these realities 
homogeneous in substance — whatever meaning that phrase 
may have. Indeed, the teaching of evolution makes it plain 
that all these complex realities have evolved out of simpler stuff. 
Brains are made up of the same matter that makes up the rest of 
the universe. So, in the fuller language of direct experience, 
consciousness is made up of the same stuff that makes up the rest 
of the w T orld. Whether we call that stuff psychic or material is a 
mere matter of convenience. There is no legitimate antithesis 
between the two terms. We shall call reality psychic if we wish 
to indicate that it is homogeneous in nature with consciousness; 
we shall call it material if we wish to indicate that it is the reality 
which lies behind (so to speak) our perception-data, the reality 
that we point to and call matter, the reality which physical science 
calls matter. All our physical knowledge is true of it. More 
also is true of it, but that more we must learn indirectly. 

One great advantage of our theory thus is that it makes the 
origin and development of consciousness a natural event in evo- 
lution. Consciousness is not a new kind of existence, suddenly 
appearing on the scene, when matter has reached the degree of 
organization to which we give the name of brain. It is that brain, 
being naturally developed by the same laws which hold true of all 



36 

physical evolution. Everything is material, everything is mental, 
(or sub-mental, if we take 'mind' as equivalent to 'consciousness,' 
the reality symbolized by a brain), according to the terms in 
which we describe it. Our theory may, as Dr. Prince well says, 
be called panpsychism or panmaterialism, according to which 
aspect of the truth needs emphasis. 

Finally, then, if neither perception nor science can tell us how 
like or unlike the qualities of things are to our perception-data, 
what means have we of inferring these qualities? We have three 
possible means. The first would be to note the exact physical 
difference between a given brain-event, the preceding nerve-event, 
sense-organ event, etc., back to the physical event in the thing 
itself which caused it. We could thus discover in physical terms 
just how the brain-event distorts the event in the thing itself, 
what is the 'personal equation' which we must eliminate in our 
description of the thing. But physical knowledge is knowledge 
only of the order, the skeleton, of reality; how shall we fill in this 
skeleton with flesh and blood? Why, our consciousness is the flesh 
and blood of which a certain brain-process is the skeleton. And 
when we have eliminated the distortion-elements from the brain- 
process, if we eliminate their corresponding conscious-elements 
we shall have left the flesh and blood which corresponds to that 
aspect of the physical event in the brain which is sl copy of the 
event in the thing itself. 

There is no need, however, if we only wish to learn the nature 
of the things at the other end of the perception-mechanism, to 
take account of that mechanism at all. What we need to do is to 
compare the event ' out there ' with the event ' here ' as physically 
described, and then use the equation which Clifford suggested. 
As the physical nature of other things is to the physical nature of 
the brain, so is the full nature of other things to the full nature of 
the brain — i.e., to consciousness. In another form, Reality : its 
physical description : : consciousness : the physical description of 
the brain-process. 

Impracticable this method certainly is at present, with the 
meagre knowledge of brains and of other material events which 
we as yet possess. The best hope for immediate results seems to 
lie in reading the minds of other people through a comparison of 
their brain-events with ours; a reading of the minds of idiots and 



37 

children and a study of all pathological cases. Then we can 
gradually work down the scale through the higher animals to the 
lowest organisms, and so hope, in this step by step manner, to ap- 
proach an insight into the inner life, the qualitative nature (the 
two phrases are equivalent) of inorganic matter. The great 
recent increase of results in pathological and animal psychology, 
and the still more recent beginnings of 'plant psychology' point 
hopefully to future conquests. We must confess, however, that 
our whole theory must forever remain a metaphysical theory, a 
theory, that is, that is essentially unverifiable. By no possible 
hook or crook can we ever get into other things and have in our 
experience their inner life, their qualitative nature, and so check 
our inferences. But we are in exactly the same case in our reading 
of the minds of our dearest friends. And so we may hope that at 
some distant time man can read, with practical assurance, the 
qualities that make up the life of all things. 

V. The Peculiarities of Consciousness 

The theory I have now outlined consists of two steps, the iden- 
tification of consciousness with brain as it is in itself, and the 
attributing to the rest of reality a nature like that of conscious- 
ness in the degree in which as physically known it is like the brain 
as physical science describes it. These two inferences seem to me 
to be supported by much evidence and to give us the simplest 
theory that explains the main known facts of existence. But it is 
only the prelude to a knowledge of reality. The fruitful task 
for metaphysics would seem to consist in filling in the flesh and 
blood throughout the spread of our physical knowledge, giving us 
in conception a picture of what things are in themselves. To do 
this we shall have to push the foundations of physics further than 
they have yet been pushed, and to learn much more of brain phy- 
siology than we now know. When we shall have learned just what 
brain-event corresponds to what quality in our consciousness, we 
shall, by comparing the different types of events, be able to con- 
struct in imagination what qualities correspond to given motions 
in the outer world. At present we are very far from being able 
to carry out such a program; and anything further than what we 
have said must be highly hypothetical. But it may be worth 



38 

while to offer a few suggestions as to what the outcome of such 
investigation may be in its salient outlines. We know enough of 
the difference between brain-events and outer physical events to be 
able to make some guesses as to the difference between conscious- 
ness and the rest of reality. What we can safely say, however, is 
mostly negative; we can point out some general peculiarities of 
the brain-process and the peculiarities of consciousness that seem 
to correspond thereto, and we can say that these peculiarities must 
not be read into the nature of outer reality. 

The first thing to settle is, just what tract of physical events 
pictures consciousness. We have spoken of the 'brain-process' 
as that tract. But the most careful studies should be carried on 
to determine exactly what part of the physical events that go 
on within the skull, and whether any physical events beyond the 
confines of the skull, picture what goes on within the field of con- 
sciousness. As to the latter portion of this inquiry, there are 
not lacking those who hold that the field of consciousness includes 
all the realities pictured by all bodily events. The facts in that 
field corresponding to events outside the brain are held to be 
'marginal' facts, a dim background to the more vivid and im- 
portant brain-event facts. The argument for this position is 
that the human body is an organic unit; it is more natural to sup- 
pose that the limits of the field of consciousness coincide with 
the limits of the body, which moves about independently among 
other things, than that it coincides with the limits of a particular 
portion of that body. 

The evidence, however, makes for the latter hypothesis. It is 
proved that if certain definite portions of the cortex are removed 
or diseased, certain definite phases of consciousness are lost or 
distorted. It is not shown that any bodily change, amputation, 
or injury, affects consciousness except indirectly, through the 
nerve-message to the brain. If the nerve that runs from eye to 
brain is severed, or if a certain small tract of the brain into which 
that nerve-cable runs is destroyed, all possibility of visual data in 
consciousness is lost, tho the eye itself be in perfect working order. 
Contrariwise, if the nerve that runs from eye to brain is stimulated 
by electricity, so that a disturbance-message is carried to the 
brain, the quality 'light' appears in consciousness even tho the 
eyes be totally blind or lost. After a man has lost a limb he still 



39 

not uncommonly seems to feel the limb. In such cases the nerve 
that used to bring messages from it to the brain is agitated and 
rouses the customary perception-data there. If the reality cor- 
responding to the body outside the brain exists within the field 
of consciousness it does not exist as the perception-data which 
make up the body in our consciousness, it can exist only as a dim 
unnoticed background. 

But it is also evident that not even all brain-events exist, in 
their reality, within the field of consciousness. There are the 
well-known cases of split personality, where two separate fields 
of consciousness exist side by side, and all stages of dissociation 
less marked. All the facts explained by the phrases 'unconscious 
cerebration' and 'the subconscious' must, on our theory, have a 
reality of the same general nature as that of our consciousness- 
elements; but they exist in isolation, without interplay of in- 
fluence, until some moment when a current rushes over from the 
isolated group into the main field. In such cases ideas jump into 
our minds out of the unknown. Much of the work of thinkers 
and poets seems to be done in this region outside the field of con- 
sciousness. Ideas ripen and mature there, and come to us in 
moments of relaxation; our energies not being then concentrated 
elsewhere, enough energy out of our always limited stock can be 
appropriated by the subconscious elements to enable them to 
flow over, as it were, into the main field. All the curious facts of 
trance, crystal-gazing, automatic writing, etc., etc., as well as 
such familiar facts as conversion, are easily explicable on this 
theory of isolated elements and groups of elements similar to 
those that make up the main field of consciousness. Hysteria is 
explained today by Freud and Janet by the conception of such 
isolated ideas and emotions, unknown to the main stream of con- 
sciousness, but having a disturbing effect upon the body and thus 
indirectly upon consciousness. These isolated ideas can often 
be tapped in the hypnotic state, or by merely directing the pa- 
tient's thoughts in the right direction ; when they are brought into 
relation with the main body of consciousness they become subject 
to the control of the will and lose their disturbing power. 

If space permitted, a long discursion into these half explored 
regions would do much to reinforce our general theory. But 
we can only pause here to say that it seems sure that those ele- 



40 

merits of reality that are bound together into the field or stream 
of consciousness are by no means all the elements of reality that 
correspond to the total sum of brain-events; much less do they 
include those elements of reality which correspond to bodily 
events outside of the brain. This organic unity which we call 
consciousness consists of such elements of our total brain-reality 
as get bound together by an interplay of causal influences, and 
therefore permit the recovery of one another's past, in the form 
of memories, from any point within the total field. Whatever 
elements have not got closely enough linked with this close- 
bound aggregate to be revivable in memory from within that 
aggregate play only a spasmodic part in the personality. Those 
events we cannot remember. But there is no sharp line. There 
are all degrees of separation and unity among the elements of the 
brain-reality. Two series of disparate activities may go on side 
by side, with little interplay of influence. We all keep our 
different kinds of experience and our different moods in more or 
less separate compartments. We all are taking in a thousand 
impressions daily which never get into the main complex, and 
have no effect on our practice. Dreams are a good illustration 
of activities that go on within our total brain-reality pretty com- 
pletely shut off from the main stream of our life, and not usually 
revivable in memory therefrom, even tho vivid enough at the 
time and attended by deep emotion. 

Consciousness is a common pool of elements, whereby action 
can be affected by all the memories recoverable therein as well 
as by the immediate perception-data that appear in it. It is a 
changing unity of elements, now shrinking, now extending, now 
losing some of its elements, now including some previously lost; 
by this gain and loss it gains and loses the potentialities of memo- 
ries. But it never includes anywhere near all the elements that 
correspond to the total sum of simultaneous brain-events. If 
motion is universal, as physics teaches, and every motion pictures 
a reality, all these simultaneous brain-events are actually 
'psychic' events, i.e., have qualities; mostly, no doubt, of a 
vague 'background' nature, but sometimes sensational, some- 
times ideational, sometimes emotional. Some reflexes seem to 
be permanently split off from consciousness, unreachable by it, 
others may exist in separation for a while and later become fused. 



41 

The cerebellum- and spinal-ganglia-events may form little con- 
sciousnesses of their own. It seems likely at any rate that our 
main consciousness never includes all simultaneous brain-events, 
never spreads, so to speak, over even the whole cortex. 

This consciousness, this brain-process (to look upon it from 
the physical side) that functions as a unit, is the most intricate 
and complex mechanism of which we know. It is the very acme 
and highest development of the long process of evolution, which 
has consisted largely in an increasing complexification. Here 
are the greatest variety of motions and of changes of motions 
within a small compass of space and time to be found anywhere. 
The richness of human consciousness is presumably pictured by 
the complexity of these motions, and its variety by their ever- 
varying character. All non-brain-matter must represent a far 
less rich and varying existence. It can have no perception of 
other reality; for the brain alone, owing to its peculiar structure 
and its relation to sense-organs, allows of that peculiar reproduc- 
tion of the form of other realities. Every element of the world 
outside of those unified groups or fields of elements which we call 
a consciousness, or a unitary brain-process, must live in the dark, 
as it were, in a sort of revery, unconscious of the existence of any- 
thing else than itself. It can probably have nothing of what 
we call pleasure or pain; for, tho there is no agreement among 
psychologists as to their physical concomitants, they probably, 
like perception, arise only when the complex brain-situation 
arises. Like perception, they are apparently a part of the 
mechanism by which the brain-in-itself steers us and adjusts us 
to the world in which we live. Emotions are made up of sensa- 
tion-elements (= perception-data) plus pleasure and pain and 
incipient motor adjustments. Memory depends upon the 
structure of the brain, and may be called its plasticity. Thought, 
imagination, conscious will — all the important varieties of con- 
scious life — are clearly dependent upon the peculiar organization 
of brain- (or conscious-) elements. Intelligence is our name for 
that organization as a whole as related to the world to which 
it is its function to adjust us. None of these complex forms of 
life can exist where that organization does not exist, i.e., outside 
the brain. 

How then can we picture the life of the rest of reality? Well, 



42 

there must be a good deal of motion in the brain of similar type 
to motions outside the brain. If we exclude the complex processes 
which symbolize the faculties we have been naming, there must 
be underneath and between them a good deal of simple motion — 
revolutions of electrons about their atomic centers, heat-motions 
of molecules, etc. These have no memories, however, and are 
very likely, in their qualitative nature, but dim feelings which it 
would be difficult for us to catch and describe even if we could 
hold them in memory. It is probable that we shall never be able 
in this direct way to get at the simple elements within conscious- 
ness. If we could catch them in introspection we should not 
know which physical motions represented them. Our hope lies 
rather in comparing our vivid and complex types of conscious- 
ness, for which we can hope to discover the physical equivalents. 
The differences in these physical motion-complexes must repre- 
sent the aspects in which those conscious-complexes differ; and we 
might thus analyze out the quality which each component of a 
motion-complex represents. 

There is, of course, a good deal of physical activity in the brain 
even during dreamless sleep. There are absent, however, sensa- 
tion-processes and the formation of memories.* If sensations 
intrude, and awaken memories, or if memories are roused through 
some internal forces, dreams occur. As to dreamless sleep, what- 
ever be the quality of the brain-reality's life, there can be no mem- 
ory of it upon awaking, so we (i.e. the main consciousness-com- 
plex) can never know what its qualities are. If we dream, the 
dreams, having little relation to our waking life, are promptly 
forgotten unless gone over in memory after awaking, and so 
linked to the waking life. If this is not done, they will yet have 
left traces on the brain's plastic organization (for they were the 
sort of process that forms memories), and under suitable circum- 
stances they may be remembered, as in another dream, or even in 
some waking revery or by some unusual sensation ; they will then 
have for us a curious familiarity, yet seem unrelated to our waking 
life. This may be the explanation of the feeling that occasionally 
arises of having had an experience which we seem to remember, 
but know we cannot actually have had in this life. With the 

* I am indebted to Professor Strong for calling my attention sharply to this aspect of 
the difference in the situation. 



43 

proper beliefs at hand, a man may thus easily persuade himself 
that he has had a vision of the beyond. 

This digression may help to clarify our ideas about conscious- 
ness. Only certain complex brain-motions represent perceptions, 
ideas, etc. And only a certain organization and interplay of 
these motions represents a togetherness of these elements, a total 
consciousness. These elements are aggregated into consciousness 
in the degree into which they are interwoven and mutually arouse 
one another. 

On the physical side, what happens when a thought or visual 
sensation enters a sleeping brain? This at least seems apparent. 
The motions in the sleeping brain are simpler and more stable 
than in the excited brain. In the latter, 'currents' are aroused, 
i.e., motions much more complex than the atomic and sub-atomic 
motions that preexisted there. And these motion-complexes are 
very unstable, rapidly changing in form; whereas the atomic 
and sub-atomic motions are pretty uniform and stable. The 
difference between the non-existence of consciousness (during 
dreamless sleep) and its existence (upon awaking, or in dreams) 
would seem to be the difference between the simple, comparatively 
stable sub-atomic, atomic, and molecular motions, and the com- 
plex and rapidly changing nerve-current-motions; between com- 
paratively simple and changeless sentient life and complex, 
rapidly changing sentient life. 

The obstinate reader who is not yet converted to our theory will 
still be saying : But motions are motions of matter, and where does 
the matter come in on this theory? Now the concept 'matter' 
can mean but one of two things; either it means our perception- 
data (contrasted with our 'subjective,' non-representative, data); 
or else it means the reality that makes up the universe. That 
reality science studies, indirectly, through a study of our per- 
ceptions; but it can tell us only its order, not its substance. That 
substance is — well, call it, if you please, 'sentience'; that word 
connotes its homogeneit}^ with our consciousness. Then ' matter ' 
and 'sentience' are equivalent terms. So motions of matter are, 
in other words, changes in sentient life. 

It is interesting to note that scientists themselves, quite with- 
out thought of metaphysics, are rapidly discarding the concep- 
tion of what we may call the materiality of matter. They are 



44 

telling us that the ultimate units of matter are not themselves 
'material.' They are calling them 'centers of force/ 'units of 
force,' etc. But, 'force' being nothing describable but motion 
and the potentiality of motion, this amounts to a blank confession 
of ignorance. What the stuff that makes up matter is, they 
simply cannot tell us. 

A few years ago physicists were trying to discover the sub- 
stance underlying matter, trying to work out a theory of matter- 
units as whirls of aether, which would then be the ultimate 
'matter,' of which what we call 'matter' and what we call 'aether- 
waves' would be different types of motion, whirls and waves. 
But according to Professor N. R. Campbell of Cambridge, Eng- 
land, one of the acutest observers and critics of contemporary 
physical theory,* this whole type of thought "is, or will be 
within the next few years, as dead as the conception of caloric 
or phlogiston. Mechanical theories of electricity have gone very 
much out of fashion. . . . The tendency is much more now to at- 
tempt to produce an electrical theory of mechanics; that is, to 
take the fundamental electrical laws and theories [laws of the dis- 
tribution of energy, or motion] as the basis of science, and to 
deduce everything else, including mechanics, as special cases of 
them." 

That is, science is frankly confessing itself to be merely rela- 
tional knowledge, and giving up the conception of a substance, 
matter, which is undergoing these space-time changes. When 
science shall finally have analyzed all physical facts into their 
simplest component motions, or forces, its work will be done. 
Only through the indirect route of metaphysics can we arrive at a 
picture, which we may hope some day to fill out in detail, of what 
things really are, in substance, in themselves. 

* His Modern Electrical Theory, Cambridge, 1907, is still the best general survey and criti- 
cism of modern researches into the ultimate nature of electricity, light, heat, etc., and the 
ultimate constitution of matter. The quotation given is from a letter to the writer dated 
Jan. 26th, 1911. 



45 



VI. Individuation 

We cannot end our consideration of the nature of things in 
themselves, the reality which lies 'behind/ is revealed in, our per- 
ceptions, without noting the theory advanced by Romanes, 
Fechner, Paulsen, Heymans, and others, that the universe of 
things-in-themselves forms a single vast consciousness, a sort of 
over-soul, including our consciousnesses and all the rest of reality. 
Tho reached by a very different and more empirical route, the out- 
come is much the same as that of absolute idealism. It is, like 
that theory, a sort of pantheism, appealing to the imagination, 
and easily making alliance with religion. It has indeed, except by 
a blurring of outlines, no personal comfort to give, no hope to offer 
that things are better than they seem, or will be better than em- 
pirical evidence indicates that they will be. But it is an alluring 
conception in itself, and it readily soaks up the connotations that 
hover about the idea of God; undoubtedly it owes thereto its chief 
elements of tenacity. 

Apart from poetry and pious hope, the argument for the con- 
ception is the analogy of the general interplay of causal influences 
throughout the universe with that interplay of influence in the 
brain which represents an animal consciousness. As the brain 
is an organism, so may the earth be called an organism, and the 
solar system, the stellar system, and whatever more inclusive 
reality there may be. There is then a hierarchy of conscious 
fields, the smaller fields not being aware of the rest of the larger 
fields of which they are a part. It is easy for a poetic mind like 
Fechner's to make this conception seem very plausible. But the 
actual argument reduces to the analogy between the organic 
unity of the brain and that of the larger units. 

What it ignores, however, is the difference between the unity 
which the brain-process has and the unity which exists between 
the brain-process and the rest of the world. Why does our con- 
sciousness stand out in a sort of isolation from the rest of the 
world? Simply because the kind of unity that exists between 
all the elements of reality is not enough of a unity to weld those 
other elements into one consciousness with it. The organic 



46 

unity of the brain-process is a very much greater unity than exists 
between the world-elements in general. 

Moreover, it is not difficult to see that the effective unity of the 
brain-process is created largely by the formation of memories — 
without which there could be nothing like what we call con- 
sciousness. The earth, and the universe, have no mechanism of 
memory — except in these little corners that we call brains. 
They have no mechanism of perception, knowledge, emotion, 
thought, or will — that is, they have not the physical mechanism 
that represents, on our theory, what we experience, in their 
fullness of reality, as these conscious states. In what sense then 
could we call the sum total of world-events a consciousness? It 
would be very different indeed from what we do empirically call 
a consciousness. Nor would it be something 'higher' than con- 
sciousness. The physical events outside the brain are simpler 
and less delicately varying than those within the brain; if our 
theory is correct, the life out there must be a less developed, less 
complex, less delicately varying life. The universe is superior 
in size to the brain; but these little bits of the universe are her 
highest developed bits; the consciousness of animals, and finally 
that of man, is qualitatively superior to the life of the rest of the 
universe. 

At any rate, the assumption that the realities pictured by the 
physical motions that make up the physical earth, or the universe, 
are all joined together in one field of consciousness, as the ele- 
ments within a human consciousness are joined, is a flat contra- 
diction of the actual state of things. Whatever might be inferred 
to be the case, such is not the case. The observable situation 
is precisely that in which one field of consciousness is separate 
from other fields, and separated from them by other realities 
which do not enter into either. A vast consciousness might 
conceivably exist somewhere, but it would not be these realities; 
for the fact of separateness is as sure a fact for these realities 
as the fact of togetherness between the elements in a conscious- 
ness. If the togetherness isn't felt, it doesn't exist; for it is 
of a /e^-togetherness that we are speaking. If we don't fee.1 
ourselves and other minds as one conscious whole, then we are 
not one conscious whole. Sensations and memories in my con- 
sciousness are not available for yours, except through the indirect 



47 

processes of expression and perception. We are doomed to be 
eternally separate, each shut up to his own data, or 'states.' 

The possibility of the belief in the larger consciousness rests 
on an incomplete analysis of the 'self.' The world-consciousness 
is thought of as a 'self or 'soul' or 'Being' that 'knows' or 
'feels' the world-events, as 'you' and 'I' 'know' our conscious 
events. Thus our conscious events exist twice, as known by us, 
and as known or felt by the world-soul. Now we have not space 
to undertake an analysis of the 'self here. We may only say, 
rather dogmatically, that 'selves' and 'souls' and 'knowers' 
are vanishing with 'matter' and 'substance' and the other 
scholastic entities. The 'self is nothing but a given conscious- 
ness, the sum of its events, or a special set of its events. That 
there is any other 'self or 'ego' or 'soul' is without evidence, and 
is a belief fast dying out. Consciousness, as Professor Strong 
says, "exists in its own right." And if this is so, if our conscious- 
ness is not our perception of certain events, which the world- 
soul might also perceive, and perceive in a relation of together- 
ness w r ith other events; if our consciousness is those events, and 
is all there is to those events ; then any events existing in a world- 
consciousness would be other events; a reduplication of these, 
perhaps, with the relation of togetherness with other events 
thrown in, but not these events themselves. That there is such 
a reduplication is of course without shadow of evidence. 

A plausible support to Fechner's theory might be found in 
some of Dr. Morton Prince's experiments. I am not aware that 
any of the pantheistic panpsychists have adduced this sort of 
evidence, but if we are to be impartial we must admit that it 
seems at first sight to establish the reality of just the situation 
which we have thrown out of court as impossible — that wherein 
a larger inclusive consciousness contains in a relation of felt-to- 
getherness smaller consciousnesses which yet feel themselves to be 
separate. The experiments I mean are those in dual personality, 
wherein personality A seems to be aware of personality B's doings 
and feelings, while B remains always in ignorance of A's. A 
natural statement of the case would be that A is a larger person- 
ality, including B; that B is a smaller personality, without knowl- 
edge of that part of A beyond the boundaries of B; that these two 
personalities coexist. Now it seems to me that the first two of 



48 

these statements describe the facts as given, but that the third 
is an illegitimate inference. It would be (if not at bottom a self- 
contradictory statement) one possible explanation. Another 
would be in terms not of coexisting but of alternating personali- 
ties. When I talk with B, a certain part of the total field which 
we may call X has been cut off; the field has shrunk; the mem- 
ories lying within the X portion are not available. The cause will 
no doubt be presently learned, in physical terms; the result is 
that the potential memories and the habits stored in the B por- 
tion of the total field (or brain-process) interwork with one an- 
other, but without those other habits, memories, elements of char- 
acter, stored in the X portion. When I talk with A, however, 
the split has ceased. I have the whole field, with all the mem- 
ories available of both the B and the X portions. Such cases of 
contracting and enlarging personality are exceedingly common, 
and it is in such terms that we should explain, no doubt, many of 
our changes of mood and disposition. The peculiarity of the 
pathological cases is that in them the incoming and outgoing 
nerve-currents (or at least those through which the observer 
holds communication with the patient) after the shift of personal- 
ity, reach and come from another region of the brain. There has 
been a switch of the currents, and that makes the sense of a dual 
personality. The centers now directly communicated with have 
desires and feelings affiliated with them other than those over in 
the B portion, which are nevertheless within communication. In 
other words, two sets of memory images and associations have 
been developed; when one set is reached by the observer it is in 
communication with the other set but is the dominant set and 
never lets the other set get control; when the second set is com- 
municated with, the first set is shut off and ineffective. 

This hastily sketched explanation may not hold. It is given 
here simply as showing the possibility of other explanations of 
the multiple personality cases than that which would make in 
favor of the Fechnerian hypothesis. The direct evidence against 
that hypothesis, in the fact that we actually find ourselves sepa- 
rate — so far as the relation which constitutes a consciousness is 
concerned — and in the study of the nature of the brain-processes 
that represent a consciousness and failure to find similar processes 
and a similar organic unity elsewhere, seems conclusive. 



49 

Leibniz went to the other extreme, and called every 'monad' 
a soul. In terms of modern science, we might hold every electron 
or prime-atom a mind. But there is nothing to indicate that 
there is an arch-atom in our brains which carries the human con- 
sciousness in it. On the contrary, the empirical concomitance 
between different parts of the cortex and different elements of 
consciousness, and the striking parallelism between the laws of 
consciousness and the laws that hold between different elements 
of an extended brain-process, point to our identification of the 
human consciousness with such an extended and organically 
united brain-process. Since no such organic union exists outside 
the brain we cannot suppose that there exists anywhere else such 
an organic whole as a consciousness. The outer reality is prob- 
ably better described, in Clifford's language, as 'mind-dust,' or in 
Strong's, as 'infra-experiences.' Schopenhauer's description of 
it as 'will' seems rather arbitrary, even when we admit that we 
cannot mean what Ave usually call will, with its conceptual ac- 
companiments and prevision. Effort, striving, may form a con- 
siderable element in the life about us; but there seems no good 
reason for excluding qualities of other types. For all we know, 
the qualities of things may be such familiar ones as we should call 
color, heat, etc. Or all their qualities may be such as we have no 
names for. We cannot know at present. 

Tho not aggregated into consciousnesses, the realities that 
make up the universe exist together in another sense. They are 
together in what we call space, and succeed one another in what 
we call time. Not, we may hasten to add, in the space which is 
a quality of our visual data, or the time which is a quality of our 
present data. Time and space in this sense are qualities of our 
consciousness, data present in our fields, and not that order in 
which existences stand related to one another. Space and time 
in the latter sense never enter within experience. The order of 
existences is a fact about those existences, not a qualit3 r of them. 
The bit of space that we have as a perception-datum can be ana- 
lyzed into qualities existing in our field of data, or consciousness; 
it represents the real order in which those realities exist which 
our perception-data represent, but it is not that real order. It is 
of course exactly so with time; the sense of duration that we feel 
now is a quality of our experience, representative of a real succes- 



50 

sion of experiences, but not identical with the fact of that succes- 
sion. Things really exist in a definite order, which we may call 
the space-time order. Causal influences find their way about in 
certain definite ways only in this order; and what the quality of an 
existence is depends partly upon its place in that order. When we 
move we actually change our place in this order. Our theory 
does not do away with this order. Each real event takes place in 
its particular place in time and space, as physical science shows us. 
But the problem of individuation arises only in the case, it would 
seem, of animal brains. Here, owing to the peculiar mechanism 
developed, a set of memories becomes available from any part of a 
total process, and what we call a consciousness appears. It is to 
be hoped that Professor Strong, in the book on which he is now 
engaged, The Origin of Consciousness, will throw further light on 
these matters. 

VITA 

(In compliance with the requirements for Doctors' dissertations.) 

Durant Drake was born at Hartford, Connecticut, Dec. 18, 1878. 
He attended Harvard University 1896-1900 and 1901-3; Columbia 
University 1910-11. Previous degrees: A.B. Harvard 1900, A.M. 
Harvard 1904. 



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